It was a pitch from the Republicans – especially Jim Douglas – for votes for Brian Dubie; that you can’t have a Democrat as Governor if Democrats are also the majority in the legislature. And it resonated with enough of the media that I was asked about it on Vermont Edition before Election Day. Implicit in the argument was the suggestion that a certain amount of stasis in government is needed, which is an odd argument considering the times.

Here’s a not-insignificant piece of evidence as to what can be done with the uncharacteristically non-antagonistic relationship currently enjoyed by leg leadership and the Governor. From a press release:

Gov. Peter Shumlin, Speaker Shap Smith, Senate President Pro Tem John Campbell and lawmakers unveil government transparency plan

[…] Among the significant provisions, the legislation would give the public records law more ‘teeth’ by designating a state office to enforce the law, and make it easier for those wrongly denied public records to recover attorney fees if they have to go to court to get access.

[…] The plan includes two parts. The first, an executive branch change, requires awareness throughout state government of the need to provide public information and training on how to comply with the open records law.

“The single biggest complaint we’ve heard is not that the law as written doesn’t go far enough,” the Governor said. “It’s that in some cases state employees have not complied with the spirit or letter of the law as written, often due to inadequate training.”

[…] Secondly, the administration has been working with lawmakers to develop a public records bill to ensure the state follows the letter of the law in providing public information. One of the key provisions of the legislation would designate a state office that has the authority to review disputes about public records requests and to issue binding orders.

In addition, the legislation would:

o   Bring together stakeholders from across the spectrum to engage in a serious, individualized review of the more than 200 exemptions built into our public records law.

o   Eliminate search time fees, whether requests for copies or inspection, for all requests that take no more than two hours to compile, while keeping those fees for the most onerous requests for copies or inspection-about 2 percent of all requests.

o   Make it clear that when the state denies a request for a public record, the burden is on the state to show that the denial is warranted.

o   Provide that if a public agency appeals an order, the person who requested the records is presumed to be entitled to attorney’s fees if he or she goes to court and wins.

“The combination of administration training and legislative changes should ensure that almost all requests for state documents are handled promptly and at no charge to the public, other than the cost of state-worker time,” Gov. Shumlin said. “And the very small number of requests that could cost taxpayers inordinate sums will be handled in a different – but fair — manner.”

Margaret Whiting, who died on Monday, was a great interpreter of the American songbook.  Long enough ago, for it to be on Social Security, her version of Moonlight in Vermont launched the song into a permanence that makes a song a standard.  I want to make the case that both the singer and the song are markers of who Vermont is.

Singers can be roughly categorized as stylists and interpreters.  Stylists, as the word implies, put their style on a song and make of it a shiny object.  In many ways, they are like opera singers who make beautiful (pronounced be you TI FULL)

sounds.  

Interpreters of songs are actors who understand that a song is a one act play with a beginning a middle and an end.  From the 20th century to now, the greatest singers as interpreters of song include Frank Sinatra, Mabel Mercer, Barbara Cook and Margaret Whiting.  Lena Horne was a brilliant example of a song stylist.  

Moonlight in Vermont is a perfect one act play.  Its form is AABA meaning four stanzas in which the first, second and fourth are set to the same music (the As) and a bridge or release with different music and form is the B.  

While the form is common, the song is unique.  Each of the As is a perfect haiku both in terms of form of haiku and the Japanese tradition that nature is its subject.  The absence of rhyme not only helps the song to flow apparently aimlessly, but the haiku provides a rigidity that is the opposite of aimless.  

Many have found the music difficult to sing.  Without getting technical, I want to say that I disagree.  What makes the song a great one musically is that it is surprisingly inevitable.  It doesn’t go where you think it will go, but once it gets there it could go nowhere else.  

The theme is nature, but it is more than a word picture, it is also about how what one sees and feels affects the singer.  It is often pointed out that sycamore (“a sycamore” trees are uncommon in Vermont.  It would be easy to replace it with “a maple tree” as it would fit the music.  Even when the song enters public domain, I would advise not making such a change.  Even though sycamore comes from the lyricists imperfect understanding of the flora and fauna (meadowlark), the words so perfectly flow with the melody that any change of vowel or consonant sound would weaken it.  

Notice how the pictures being painted are not just of the natural world but of how the human inhabitants have remade that world – pennies, ski trails, telegraph cables, highway, road.  In so doing, it makes for a smooth transition to the human point of view.  People who meet, romantic.  This sets up the final A which is only about nature until the tag on that A – you and I.  The song is being sung by one person to another.  You, I, Vermont are as one.  

Note how A1 suggests fall, A2 is clearly winter thought it does not directly say so and A3 is explicitly summer.  Note also how the first two As are not confined by time while the final one (ev’ning) suggests one day in particular.  Hypnotized is an action word that shows how the seen world affects singer and hearer.  

The song encapsulates what makes Vermont Vermont.  Its not a documentary travel bureau scene, but a picture of what a wonderful book calls hands on the land and how this can change us.  

Margaret Whiting’s long career is proof of how a great singer as interpreter lasts, while a stylist only survives as long as the style does.  The opera diva eventually can no longer make those beautiful sounds, but the work of a great actor or singer can only deepen with age.  It will be fun, in another diary, to compare Barbara Cook with Margaret Whiting – one from the stage, the other from popular music, and see how both don’t lose the ability to move and beguile us.  

Not only is Moonlight in Vermont a great song, it tells the world who we are.  We and the song are so lucky that it was introduced by a great interpreter of song, it speaks to us and doesn’t date.  A reader might well have noticed my first paragraph  ends with “who Vermont is.”  It is the songwriters John Blackburn & Karl Suessdorf and Margaret Whiting who turn the expected what into the deeply felt who – who Vermont is.

Pennies in a stream

Falling leaves, a sycamore

Moonlight in Vermont

Icy finger-waves

Ski trails on a mountainside

Snowlight in Vermont

Telegraph cables, they sing down the highway

And travel each bend in the road

People who meet in this romantic setting

Are so hypnotized by the lovely…

Ev’ning summer breeze

Warbling of a meadowlark

Moonlight in Vermont

Telegraph cables, how they sing down the highway

And they travel each bend in the road

People who meet in this romantic setting

Are so hypnotized by the lovely…

Ev’ning summer breeze

The warbling of a meadowlark

Moonlight in Vermont

You and I and Moonlight in Vermont

–John Blackburn (lyrics) & Karl Suessdorf (music)

I urge everyone to take a moment to read this piece on Daily Kos.  An excerpt:

If you maintain a blog or website, and you post blockquoted text, photos, and images from copyrighted sources such as newspaper websites, you could unknowingly find yourself served with a lawsuit by Righthaven or another firm like Righthaven. Here’s how Righthaven operates specifically:

They purchase the copyright to an article or image from the newspaper that they represent. Then they search the Internet for websites, blogs, and forums where those articles or images were posted without authorization. They find out the identity of the owner of the website or the identity of the blogger or forum member. Then they serve that individual or organization with a lawsuit for copyright infringement. Actually, there is another step that they do between steps two and three, but I will get to that later.

It’s common practice for us, as bloggers, to quote small excerpts of pieces for argument, elucidation and sometimes just plain amusement value.   This is, of course, entirely legal, but if a group such as Righthaven chooses to go after us, many of us don’t have the resources to hire an attorney or defend ourselves in court.  Common practice is for people to end up settling out of court to make the lawsuit go away.  Part of the problem with this is not the lawsuits, but the way it creates an atmosphere in which less information is shared because we are unwilling to risk it.

Similarly, there’s some concern about this:

Cosponsored by state Rep. Carolyn Partridge (D-Rockingham), the bill would expand Vermont’s “disturbing the peace” statute to include electronic communications that “knowingly and intentionally” cause “false and defamatory” postings to be made on a website. The crime would be punishable by a fine of up to $250 and up to three months in jail; on second offense, the fine and jail time increase to $500 and six months.

My concern with this, however, is not nearly as great as with the former case.  In the former case, someone is abusing the cost of the legal system to get people to cough up money to protect themselves.  In the latter, the problem is primarily that this bill doesn’t actually do anything new.  We’ve already got a law on the books about disturbing the peace that includes electronic communication:

§ 1027. Disturbing peace by use of telephone or other electronic communications

(a) A person who, with intent to terrify, intimidate, threaten, harass or annoy, makes contact by means of a telephonic or other electronic communication with another and (i) makes any request, suggestion or proposal which is obscene, lewd, lascivious or indecent; (ii) threatens to inflict injury or physical harm to the person or property of any person; or (iii) disturbs, or attempts to disturb, by repeated anonymous telephone calls or other electronic communications, whether or not conversation ensues, the peace, quiet or right of privacy of any person at the place where the communication or communications are received shall be fined not more than $250.00 or be imprisoned not more than three months or both. If the defendant has previously been convicted of a violation of this section or of an offense under the laws of another state or of the United States which would have been an offense under this act if committed in this state, the defendant shall be fined not more than $500.00 or imprisoned for not more than six months, or both.

All that Obie’s suggested change does is to clarify that “electronic communication” includes anonymous posts on web sites.

I agree that freedom of speech is critical, but there’s a big difference between freedom of speech and freedom to harass or intimidate people.  We’ve kicked people from Green Mountain Daily for attempting to invade the personal lives of group members, and with good reason.  Anonymous or not, posting about someone’s employer, posting about their family?  That’s all illegal under the law I’ve just posted, and should remain so.  That’s a far cry from posting things that piss people off, or responding in kind to posts that are made here in which both members are kind of going after one another (not that anything like that ever happens) in a personal way.

I want us to be vigilant about freedom of speech, but privacy and the right not to be harassed, slandered or libeled are important as well, and we can strike a good balance.  What Righthaven does clearly crosses that line.  What we, as bloggers, do, generally doesn’t, especially since our primary targets are public officials and people working with government.  Obie’s legislation, while redundant, doesn’t seem to change current legislation except by making clear that defamation is part of the statute and clarifying online communications.  I don’t actually see a problem with this.  

I, of course, welcome arguments to the contrary and look forward to seeing you guys tell me how wrong I am.

(Cool. – promoted by odum)

I saw a word cloud comparison today between Obama’s speech and she-who-won’t-be-named. I thought it might be interesting to do the same for Shumlin’s 2011 Inaugural Address and Jim Douglas’ from 2009.

Shumlin – 2011

Douglas – 2009

One thing that stood out to me was the lack of action words that were in Peter’s speech like create, deliver, build, innovative in the Douglas speech. Also, for someone who was elected with the slogan Jim=Jobs, I had to look hard to find that word in his word cloud.

Enjoy.

Sarah Palin and her followers among the Tea Party are bobbing and weaving in the wake of the shooting in Arizona, outright denying their use of violent rhetoric targeting political opponents in some cases (casting the now-notorious “crosshair” targeting imagery as surveyor’s marks rather than gun sights, for example). Palin herself has, of course cast herself as the victim rather than step up and confront the relationship between violent political rhetoric and violent political action herself.

Please. Either own your words and your rhetoric, or use different words and rhetoric. From my perspective, it seems like a pretty obvious connection and a pretty obvious degree of responsibility in play (not responsibility for the action of the shooter, just responsibility for feeding the political petrie dish that nourishes such nutcases). I don’t necessarily expect the Tea Party crowd to see it the same way, but is a less craven response really too much to expect from someone like Palin, who plays the role of leader to a large segment of the population?

Apparently in this universe it is. Fortunately, I’m on a lot of email lists, and I received the following press release from the Mirror universe. In the Mirror universe, our doubles have, in many ways, the very opposite qualities of their counterparts here. Sometimes it’s a scary thing. Other times it’s… refreshing.

Here, then, is the press release from the Mirror-Sarah-Palin, responding to criticism of her rhetoric surrounding the equivalent event in the Mirror-universe.

I would like to take a moment to respond to some of the discussions currently underway in the wake of the tragic and horrific attack in Arizona this weekend.

A federal judge has been assassinated. A US Congresswoman is in critical condition. Others have been murdered for simply being nearby, including a 9-year old girl.

At this point, it seems clear that the shooter had political motivations for his horrific actions, and while those motivations are not what can reasonably be considered “conservative” in the context of mainstream political debate, it must be said that his anti-government ideology, given the peculiar commentaries on currency and the like, is most likely a product of the extreme political right. As a result, many are now questioning whether or not some of the strong-worded rhetoric from the Tea Party movement, and some of my own words on behalf of the American people, should be considered as a causal factor in the actions of this individual.

This is an understandable reaction in the face of tragedy. As much as some of my supporters would defensively try to cast the crosshairs on our legislative targeting map as akin to surveying marks, this is, of course, not accurate. We specifically and intentionally used words and symbols that evoked warfare and firearms, and indeed we are hardly the first. We are, as a nation, engaged in what has been called by both sides as a “culture war,” and it is hardly an escalation to speak of political and electoral strategizing in that context, using the weapons and rehtoric of war.

So while I understand the objections – even the angry ones – to the use of this kind of rhetoric, I must respectfully disagree with the conclusion that such rhetoric can be considered in any way responsible for the tragic events of this weekend. First of all, I hope it goes without saying that our rhetoric was never intended to be taken as a call to violence. I honestly believe that no sane, reasonable person could see it as such.

Which brings us to the point that the shooter, I believe, was neither sane nor reasonable, and was almost certainly predisposed to such antisocial and violent behavior.

Let me be clear once again – and I hope my supporters understand this – I understand the strong reactions and the finger-pointing towards the uncompromising rhetoric of the Tea Party, and out of respect, I would never condemn or disparage anybody for reacting angrily towards myself or others who have chosen to express our views so passionately. But the simple fact is that we cannot allow our speech – especially our most passionate political speech – to be captive to what the dangerously violent or unstable elements in our society may do without ceding some control of our political process to them. I certainly do not intend to do so, even as I understand and appreciate that I may be subject to criticism for that view.

So let me close by once again expressing my deepest condolences to the victims of this horrible attack. My thoughts are with the families, and my prayers are with all the wounded. I and my family join with all Americans of all political stripes in hoping for a complete and speedy recovery for all.

A shame we can’t trade up.

Oh for god’s sake. From Totten:

One key appointment hasn’t been announced publicly, though: chairman of the Governor’s Council of Economic Advisors. This person assembles the 18-member advisory panel that, in turn, shapes the governor’s economic policies.

Since the reign of Gov. Madeleine Kunin, one man has chaired this council – Harlan Sylvester, the political kingmaker and consummate insider I wrote about last October in a story titled “The Man Behind the Throne.”

Sylvester backed Republican Brian Dubie for governor, raising questions about whether Shumlin would keep Sylvester around. Question no more: Despite Sylvester’s support for his rival, Shumlin has decided to keep the 77-year-old on as the council’s chairman.

This is appalling. Sylvester is a paper tiger: a self-appointed kingmaker who has made himself legendary in Burlington political circles. His only real power has come from the perception of his power, and his consistent talent at presenting himself as a big shot.

Economically, he espouses just the kind of big corporate, trickle-down, discredited supply side nonsense which has crippled the US economy, limited real prosperity (except among those with the highest incomes) and threatened much of our safety net. He is the failed past – and a Dubie/Douglas supporter to boot. Further empowering him in this way does we, Shumlin’s allies – particularly in Burlington – no favors whatsoever. On the contrary, Sylvester should be politically marginalized.

It was one thing when Shumlin acknowledged political opponent Bill Stenger of Jay Peak fame – the same one who was instrumental in the legally questionable (at best) RNC television ad against him – during his inaugural speech. That looked kinda noble.

By re-promoting Sylvester to his appointed lordship (and squandering an opportunity to get some new blood and new ideas where they are desperately needed), Shumlin doesn’t look noble. He looks like an eager-to-please puppy dog. And in retrospect, it makes the Stenger acknowledgment look a little less rosy. Stenger, after all, apparently stood him up in the actual inauguration, as it sounded as though Shumlin couldn’t find him on the floor.

I don’t know about you, but I’d be more interested to see the big-shot moneybag Republican supporters looking eager to please the new Governor, rather than have him looking quite so eager to play the role of corporate old boy network groupie.

Green Mountain Daily has obtained a copy of this open letter to the Montpelier City Council from its author, Aaron Kromash, who authorized us to publish it in its entirety.

An open letter to:

The Honorable Mary Hooper

Councilors

 Tom Golonka

 T. Andrew Hooper

 Sarah Jarvis

 Jim Sheridan

 Nancy Sherman

 Alan H. Weiss

By e-mail

Dear Mayor Hooper and Council Members:

I hope the new year begins well for you.  In advance of your Jan 12 meeting, I am writing to you to address the subject of “Electronic Control Devices” (i.e., Tasers), which I know is on the next meeting agenda.

Because Montpelier is my capital and a city I enjoy and visit, and because I will therefore be affected by your decisions on this issue, I am writing to brief you on relevant facts I have learned in the course of preparing two public information programs on Tasers for the towns of Greensboro and Hardwick last November.  I have reviewed the documents provided in your packet by Chief Facos, and I find that they do need supplementation with substantial facts of concern to the public.

In the first instance, you should know that Tasers more resemble firearms than any other weapon in police arsenals, despite the fact that the VLCT “Response to Resistance” explicitly equates Tasers with chemical sprays.  The only reason that this latter comparison is even credible is that Taser probes are fired by compressed nitrogen, not gunpowder, and this design was deliberate, being an attempt to completely circumvent any federal ATF regulation.

Nonetheless, Tasers are in fact lethal weapons,

Nonetheless, Tasers are in fact lethal weapons, and though none of the documents in your packet mentions Taser-related deaths explicitly, the most comprehensive online registry of these statistics (reference below) lists 530 individuals who have died to date after tasering by police in the US and Canada alone.  The most recent of these fatalities is Kelly Wayne Sinclair, age 41, a mentally ill man tasered by police in Amarillo, Texas on January 5, 2011.  Statistics from other countries are not readily available but would surely add to this total.

Likewise, please do not be confused by the IACP printout in your packet (“What Every Police Chief Should Know…”) stating that the injury rate from tasering is lower than 1%.  These statistics are not collected through mandated reporting and are often prepared by the manufacturer of the weapon, Taser International.  They exclude primary injuries caused by the Taser itself (i.e., puncture wounds, bleeding, and burns), and they often exclude “non-serious” secondary injuries that individuals incur when they fall to the ground after tasering, as all individuals do.  The Attorney General’s report and other references below indicate that roughly 20-30% of people shot with Tasers require medical treatment for injuries such as punctures, contusions, lacerations, burns, fractures, and broken teeth.  To some extent, this phenomenon is a shifting of policing costs from the public sector to hospitals, private insurers, and the public.

Locally, even during the presentation I made in Hardwick, a man named James Anair came forth to speak publicly about how, during an adverse drug reaction, he had been tasered multiple times by Morrisville police in an incident two years prior and suffered several secondary injuries and intense, lasting psychological trauma as a result (a DVD is available).  According to the statistics you have been given, Mr. Anair should have been a rarity, but he was not, and my sense is that there are many more Vermonters who could tell similar stories if the issue were brought to a larger forum.

Were officers to have inflicted the aforementioned injuries through “hands-on” methods rather than high technology, I think the perception of police conduct would be rather different; yet, the end result is the same.  Tasers are serious weapons with the potential to injure or kill people.

For all this death and injury, you might expect to hear about more Taser-related litigation, again only lightly mentioned in your documents, and there has been much litigation, but until very recently Taser International had successfully settled every claim in secret or prevailed in litigation by virtue of its vast legal and financial resources.  These cases includes at least several claims by police officers themselves who were permanently injured in training under optimal training conditions.

Only in 2008 did Taser International lose its first product liability lawsuit, with a jury awarding $6.2 million to the estate of Robert Heston, a California man killed by multiple tasering in 2005.  And since that landmark case, the company has finally relented and begun to settle product liability suits for its defective products, the very first of which was paid just last August, when the company ceded $2.85 million to Steven Butler of California, who suffered debilitating brain damage and permanent immobility after he was shocked with a Taser.

You, who have all felt the obloquy over the city’s missing $400,000, should perhaps take these multimillion figures into account before you commit the city to a potential liability that could make $400,000 look small.  And to be rigorous, you should also consider these numbers against the $6,000 that Chief Facos cites offhandedly as the approximate recent annual cost to Montpelier for officer injuries from “combative action.”  A cost-benefit analysis is needed.

Amid the most recent lawsuits and reaction, Taser International has admitted to the need for redesign to make its weapons “safer”, bowing, for example, to pressure from none other than the Police Executive Research Forum to build in a stop control that limits the duration of electroshock that a shooter can deliver.  This new feature is supposed to be available in 2011, and I am not aware of whether Chief Facos proposes to purchase the current, now legally defective, model of Tasers, or a newer generation, but you would be advised to ask this question as well.

You should also ask the Chief many questions bearing on accountability for Taser use, where the VLCT document displays substantial weakness.  Why, for example, is “passive resistance” nowhere defined in that policy?  Does “active resistance” include techniques of civil disobedience, such as those employed in the infamous Brattleboro case reviewed by the AG report in your packet?  Does the MPD request include Taser-mounted video cameras?  Will the MPD commit to archiving and public access to Taser firing data and video footage?  Will the MPD publicly report each and every Taser deployment, including purely deterrent uses?  Satisfactory answers to all of these questions would go a long way to ensuring good community perceptions.

Despite all else I’ve written, I would not minimize the problem of officer injuries and the right of police to as safe a working environment as possible.  This is the context of Chief Facos’ request, and likewise, Sergeant Cochran’s survey, and Burlington Chief Schirling’s memorandum.  But these documents are largely anecdotal, and they contain few statistics, little interpretation of the numbers they present, and a narrow argument that is not by itself a compelling case for Tasers in Montpelier.  Though the concern for officer safety is legitimate, what you as civilian policy makers need to understand is, as the VLCT document correctly states, that use of force policy must, “serve all citizens while at the same time respecting the rights of suspects and balancing the need for officer safety.”  

But it is not the institutional mission of police to consider this balance; it is, rather, yours.  And the problem of Tasers in achieving this balance is that they seem to make of safety, civil liberties, and public finance a zero-sum game, giving to law enforcement only to the extent that they take away from others.

In considering Chief Facos’ request, it is then your job to balance all of these factors¬officer versus public safety, large-scale litigation versus occupational claims, and humane and just treatment versus cruel and unusual punishment.  In the process, you cannot rely unduly on the police perspective or privilege their concerns above all others; for, to do so would be to make the police, quite puzzlingly, a reason unto themselves, when they are only empowered in the first place to serve the public.  Simply put, you must make the MPD prove a case that seems conspicuously weak in the documents I’ve reviewed, and in the larger context of what is known about the risks and benefits of Tasers.  Yours is not a simple decision, and you should approach it with a wide perspective of knowledge, which is why I hope you will review the sources I list below.

But finally, regardless of your decisions this week, you should understand that the issue is not settled so simply.  Though this is indeed a major policy juncture for you and the city, others will follow, because the engineers at Taser International get up every day and return to work.  Next year you may be asked to fund a purchase of the Taser X3 triple-shot Taser gun, or the XREP Taser shotgun shell, or the vision-disrupting “Dazer Laser”, and the requests for ever more advanced weaponry will not end.  If there is, then, something enduring in the values that underlie your policy decisions, I urge you to focus on that instinct as much as what the current technology promises.

Sincerely Yours,

Aaron M. Kromash

Greensboro VT

When I was young, I used to play with balance.  I started with railroad tracks, and moved on to fences and other objects: anything I could do to stabilize myself on a thin, small surface was fun to me.  I even would walk on top of guardrail fences on cliff edges.  I was that confident about it, not that I would never fall, but that if I did fall, I could control the direction of the fall.

And I was really good at falling.

There’s a metaphor I like to use when I discuss mental illness with my students to try to get them a better sense of what mental illness is and how it works:

Imagine that everyone’s relative state of mind exists on a plateau: the stronger, more solid the plateau, the more robust our mental state and the more able we are to cope with change.

The plateau has ladders and ropes hanging from it.  Even when we’re buffeted and accosted enough to get thrown, we have ways of climbing back up and maintaining stability again.  

But not everyone has the same quality of ladders and ropes.  Some people have ladders which are weaker.  Rungs may snap off if grabbed to quickly.

Some people have a solid, level surface on top.  Others have slants and crags, ready to trip them up in emergencies.  A lot of times, those cracks grow deeper when things go badly.

Different events and circumstances in our lives make things better or worse.  Strong personal ties?  Friendships?  Those can be part of the ladder or make it more resilient.  Being bullied or emotionally dismantled?  Those do harm, make the mountaintop harder to navigate.

For some of us, it’s all about order: if you can plan your moves, think about them, and work them through, you can get through anything, but introduce noise, distraction, frustration?  That makes everything more complicated.

For most of us, this isn’t about illness as much as it is about stress and responding to it.  But for the ones that fall, and fall hard, some of them don’t know how to find their way back up.  They don’t even know which direction “up” is.  Some of them get help, and learn how to find it.  Some figure it out on their own, eventually.  Others just fall from the gentle graces of sanity and never find their way back.

Different factors affect how this works.  For some of us, falling and climbing makes us better climbers and makes us better at finding our way back to ourselves.  For others it gets more difficult with every fall.

Some of us have platforms that seem as solid as a rock but one major stress factor takes them off and the platforms shatter and burst.  

Others seem completely unstable their whole lives, but manage to live comfortably throughout it all, never really falling or even being in danger of it, as though their proximity to the fall is what keeps them from falling.  Or, as Delerium phrased it in the Sandman story “Three Septembers and a January,” “He’s not mine, is he?  His madness… His madness keeps him sane.”

This metaphor only goes so far– there are so many kinds of mental illness out there.  Some fit this framing better than others and some don’t fall into it at all, but it’s a start.

I mention all this because sometimes it feels as though, as a culture, we’ve gone off the rails.  The frequency of public commentary which is tainted with violence imagery or suggestions of harm?  That’s a problem.  It may or may not trigger people who are mentally ill to do horrendous acts.   But it adds stress.  It buffets us.  

I mentioned before that I was good at falling.  In the strictly literal sense, I’m not so good at balance as I used to be– I’ve had injuries over the years that have affected the flexibility of my body to respond.  My legs are slightly uneven and I’m currently living with a great deal of what I hope is temporary pain.  But that’s beside the point.  

But in the metaphorical sense, I’ve fallen a lot of times in my life, and I’ve always climbed out again.  I think it’s made me stronger, and I think it’s made me saner to be so close to the edges from time to time that I can see the abyss and know what it is and choose not to dwell on it.  I still know how to walk with balance and I still know how to fall with grace.  

My world changed Saturday, ever so much.  I think for anyone who’s paying any sort of attention, it had to have.  Even people who would deny it do so primarily out of fear.  For some people it changed in much more direct, drastic

There’s a young man in jail right now who, for whatever reason, doesn’t know what up is, does not know how to fall, and has managed to swan dive off that platform and leave a body count behind.  I will not recount the factors that led to this.  I’m talked to death about all of it.  I will, however, just note in passing that without such easy access to automatic weapons, that body count might not have been so bad.  

As a culture and as a society, I think our language matters, not in the sense that anyone using eliminationism is necessarily directly responsible when the mentally unstable who experience auditory hallucinations can’t tell the difference between the voices in their own heads and the voices in the media.  But it sure as hell doesn’t help matters when that’s the case.  

Right now, as a country, we’re on the balance.  We’ve just seen into that abyss and where it can lead– we’ve got people trying to find someone to blame for it all, and we’ve got people lashing out because they feel partially responsible.  

And right here, right now, we have a choice: do we step back from that cliff side?  Do we choose to continue in the direction we’ve been going?  Do we embrace more rhetoric, more talk of violence, more talk of the “bullseye” painted on politicians?  Or do we say “enough” and give ourselves a little room to recover from this, to use it as an opportunity to change our world for the better?

I count myself among the lucky ones that I can think clearly about this sort of thing without losing my anger over what happened, without feeling bitter.  I can feel sad about it without falling into depression and I can be enraged over it without considering violence as a serious option.  I know others who do not do so so easily.

I don’t have a clear lesson to take from all of what’s happened except to say that there are a series of stories that came out of this event, some tragic, some heartbreaking and others inspiring and wonderful.  I’m making a choice to learn from all of it, and to take the best I can from it and to try to find a better world tomorrow.

Senator Bernie Sanders often sends out a constituent newsletter to many on his list that includes the Senator’s perspective on many of the issues of the day, particularly those which he is actively addressing in Washington. Like many such pieces, it also includes a fundraising appeal.

Unfortunately, his most recent piece included references to the shooting in Arizona of Representatve Gabrielle Giffords and many others. The total piece, then, left him open to the following from Sarah Palin’s #1 fan Bill Kristol’s Weekly Standard:

Sanders Fundraises Off Arizona Murders

There has been no shortage of individuals and institutions that have sought to capitalize on the shootings in Tucson. Add Vermont senator Bernie Sanders to that list.

This afternoon Sanders sent out a fundraising appeal, seeking to raise money to fight Republicans and other “right-wing reactionaries” responsible for the climate that led to the shooting.

According to HuffPo’s Sam Stein, Bernie’s office responded that it would have been “absurd” to ignore the incident in a political, current-events driven newsletter, and pointed out that “the senator devoted one sentence in a four-page newsletter to thanking his supporters and another sentence indicating that their support in the future would be appreciated.”

I don’t think it’s reasonable to knock Bernie too hard on this given the above, but it was foolish at best not to anticipate this reaction. This will only be the beginning of this line of attack, not simply from the Standard, but from talk radio, Fox News and conservative bloggers, before echoing into the legacy media. Ouch.

Of course, elsewhere, the “Tea Party Express” is explicitly using the tragedy to raise money, casting itself – again – as a victim. We’ll see if we hear as much about that…

 UPDATE: NEXT TASER HEARING THURSDAY, JANUARY 20.

The next hearing on the Tasers will be held Thursday night. This will be the time for the council to decide whether to go ahead with the purchase.

The City Manager is recommending it, so they really need to hear from you.

Date: January 12, 2011

Place: Montpelier City Hall

Time: 7:00

As we reported a couple of months ago, the Montpelier Chief of Police is asking the voters to buy Tasers for the Montpelier Police. Wednesday night is the first public hearing on the budget which, as drafted, includes the funds for the Tasers. This hearing will be your chance to let the Council know how you feel about deployment of Tasers in the Capital City.

 We've covered the issue many times in the past. Its uses and especially abuses in and out of Vermont are well documented. Because I think the acquisition and deployment of Tasers in Montpelier would be a dangerous step, I will be there tomorrow night, and I hope you will join me.

1. Tasers are deadly force. While touted as nonlethal or “less lethal” (note the ass-covering change in terminology), there are hundreds of documented cases of deaths resulting from or arising after Taser shocks.

2. Defenders of Tasers will argue that they should not be considered lethal, or that it is improper to call the Taser the cause of death in the known cases. They will argue that the actual cause of death was some previously unknown medical condition. What they conveniently ignore is that  any one of us could have one of those previously unknown medical conditions, and that the police won't know until after the administer the shock. 

3. Taser deployment lowers the threshhold. Every time they argue for Tasers they claim they need them because Tasers save lives. Then they wind up using them when someone's making a nuisance of themselves at the corner store. 

Join us tomorrow night. Speak out against the irresponsible deployment and use of deadly force.